Over the past three years, Sean placed 13th, fifth and 17th in The Examiner spelling bee, he said. The difference this year was that instead of just studying a booklet of likely words, he spent time every day studying the dictionary.

"He doesn't get nervous," said his mom, BryanneConley, who is also his teacher. "I was the nervous wreck."

His father, Mike Conley, a software engineer at Apple Computer, stopped taking photos of his trophy-wielding son long enough to say, "I wish my mind worked like his. It's a steel trap. He remembers everything. He says if he can say the word out loud, he knows how to spell it."

His mom added, "Sean has always loved letters. When he was, maybe 2, I remember him picking up a stick and saying, "Look, mommy, it's a Y.""

The competition, held in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on The Embarcadero, lasted three hours and drew 50 contestants ranging in age from 7 to 13.

As champion, Conley will now go on to the 72nd Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., at the end of May.

"I thought I would finish in the top, but I didn't think I'd win," said Sean, who has enormous blue eyes and a bowl haircut. "I thought the toughest competition would be Eamon."

He was referring to defending champion Eamon Doyle, 13, who won the spelling bee in 1997 and 1998 but placed fourth on Saturday.

The San Francisco eighth-grader at Francisco Middle School was tripped up in a final round by "hypocaust," which means a hallow space under the floor in ancient Roman houses into which hot air was sent. Doyle spelled the word "hypocost."

"I knew I was wrong right after I spelled it because I realized it was "caust,' which means hot," he said.

He and his father, Tim Doyle, a computer applications program manager who shares his love of words, are already planning their next big mind game: a teen version of TV's Jeopardy.

"I like these competitions," Eamon said. "I like the winning part. And, you get to learn a lot of words to impress your friends."

The youngest competitor of the day was Samantha Smiley, a diminutive third-grader from Our Lady of Angels in Burlingame.

Many of the words she safely navigated were bigger than she: "lobscouse" and "frankincense," to name a few.

Making it to the penultimate round, Smiley misspelled

"ichnalite," which is a fossilized foot print. Her guess: "ichnalyte."

"It was fun," she said, as her mother hugged her. "I'd like to come back next year."

The other winners were: Christine Salindong, a Fremont seventh-grader who took second place; Natalie Tran, a Piedmont eighth-grader who tied with Katherine Banares, a Colma eighth-grader, for third place; and Ciara Sanker, an eighth-grader from Oakland who tied with Eamon Doyle for fourth place.&lt;